Customer Reviews

BRIO Mighty Red Locomotive

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The batteries don't last very long and the train has stopped working after a year of minimal use. It still makes the sounds but no longer moves. I love the train but would never spend this much again.

I was looking for an engine that could mightily pull my son's train cars around on his Brio/Thomas tracks. In other words, I wanted a multi-drive engine, and reviews I read left me expecting this is a 6-wheel-drive engine. WRONG. This cute little engine only has two-wheel drive. It does a fine job pulling cars around on the "flats" or down hills but once it starts up a hill it gets stuck. The only thing it can pull up a gentle Brio/Thomas hill is itself. It seems when going up hills, because its wheelbase is so long, that the main drive wheels lose contact with the track. A little pressure over the cabin (above the driving wheels) helps this "mighty" engine get up the hills. Unfortunately my son has a problem judging pressure, so this necessary action causes undue power drain on the batteries as the engine works much too hard while it is assisted up the hills.

For pulling power, I would recommend the 4-wheel drive Thomas or Percy battery-operated engines. What this engine has over the aformentioned ones is style. The buttons are much better designed than Thomas' or Percy's; there is a seperate button for forward, stop and reverse--very easy for little children to use. Plus add adorable chug-chugging sound FX, forward/reverse lights, easy-to-operate free-wheeling switch button, its shiny red body and it is almost too adorable to resist.

My son loves this engine. He seems much more patient with this "mighty" engine's lack of hill mastery than we, his parents, are. But for the price we expected better. Lastly, buy some rechargeable batteries--this engine is a mighty big power hog--and the extra Brio Stop and Go switch track. They are worth the extra cost.

This engine is great fun ... as long as you don't use it on BRIO's own train tracks. The locomotive is bright red, it toots and whistles and has two headlights that will brighten up your kid's eyes. Unfortunately, it also needs lots of handholding, because it gets stuck quite often. In curves, especially going in reverse and up hills. The mighty red locomotive is a little too mighty and could use a slimming diet. I'm returning mine. A much better choice is the yellow engine which is also battery driven ... and uses just one AAA battery.

This is the second battery powered engine that we got for our son's Brio set. It is a good looking engine that is more powerful than the smaller engine we have. It goes forward, reverse and has a working headlight and whistle. Another good feature is the auto shut-off. After five minutes the engine automatically stops, saving the battery. I can't tell you how many times our son had turned on the old engine and then walked away, killing the battery a couple of hours later.

We did not have the same experience as some of the other users who complained about the engine's inability to climb hills. We have two bridges and the engine is able to pull five cars up without difficulty. We do not have the tallest bridges Brio makes however, so we can't say that our experience is necessarily inconsistent with others. We have the figure 8 bridge and the draw bridge, and it climbs these easily as long as the tracks are properly aligned and leveled.

If you get this engine, expect it to get a lot of use. It uses two AAA batteries. I strongly recommend getting a battery charger and Nickel Metal Hydride recharageable batteries. You are likely to go through half a dozen batteries a week if your child plays with this engine as much as our three year old.

This engine is a terrific addition to your child's Brio set. It brings the train set to life and it is great fun.

I wish I could figure out why even the teensiest little hill or gentlest curve defeats this engine. Only one wheel on one side seems to be powered, so when that gets stuck, the other seven spin uselessly. My son lost interest pretty quickly. On the upside, I guess you could say the fact that it needs help all the time makes it very interactive.

My 4 1/2 year old recieved this red engine last Christmas, and for the first couple of months was used practically every day. (And yes, I agree with the rest of the reviewers- buy rechargable batteries since this engine eats them, and prepare to be disappointed since it cannot pull many cars up the hills without getting stuck.) I will tell you that I cannot BELIEVE my son has not touched this engine since. His complaint is that all it does is go around and around. Instead, he enjoys playing out stories from Thomas, or making up his own train sagas. My husband likes to watch the engine more than my son. I don't know how other children play with their trains, but the battery operated engines just cannot hold his attention for very long. Nevertheless, for the first few months, watching it is really mesmerizing, I could watch it for hours. Perhaps instead of buying this one engine, purchase a setup with more cars and track for the same money. It will probably get more use in the end.

I bought the toy for my 4-year old son, who already have played a lot with BRIO trains. But the Action Locomotive arrived defective: the noise and light worked, but the machine did not. Amazon.com replaced the toy. Although this time it worked fine, I realized that the locomotive was not capable of climbing bridges, which was very frustrating for my son. And frustrating for me was the fact that the batteries last only a couple of hours of (non-continuous) playing. I have to replace them every 3 or 4 days!

I was completely disappointed at how short of a time it lasted in our house with my 2 year old son. It did not make it up the hills and seemed to lose power very quickly. We had purchased the smaller of the two battery powered locomotives previously so I was expecting a little more quality out of this one. I have to say that the smaller engine was much stronger and more durable than the larger more expensive one. We are going back to the smaller one, which lasted months instead of days. Yet another expensive purchase down the drain :(

Out of the box, this was exactly what I was expecting for our two-year-old. For about a day, it really worked great, hauling the Brio cars around, up and over the hill on the figure-eight starter set. It's certainly got a strong enough engine.

Within a couple of days, though, it stopped going up the hill, and got very balky going around the turns. On examination, it seems like the single axle is turning just fine, but the wheels are slipping against the axle--if you pick up the locomotive when it's running, you can easily stop the wheels spinning with your finger, but the axle keeps turning. As far as I can tell, the axle is _round_, going through a _round_ hole in the wheel, and surprise, surprise, it slips.

I'm going to try to fix this with a couple of spots of epoxy, to try and glue the axle to the wheel without gluing the wheel to the train. Nevertheless, this seems like a disappointing piece of engineering--a square axle going through a square hole would probably have prevented this from happening. In any case, while this toy is a _great_ idea, in practice, it's pretty poorly made.

I bought two red locomotives (not at the same time) because I thought that two batteries would be better than one. Wrong. The yellow engine has been the longest functioning. The green one broke down but I suppose this can happen to any toy. The red locomotives are too long, too heavy to go up steep slopes, they often slip. The screw is too far deep and I always think this is the last time I will be able to unscrew it! Buy the engines instead!